The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to manipulate user interface objects on a display.
Exemplary manipulations include adjusting the position and/or size of one or more user interface objects or elements, navigating through graphical user interfaces having one or more user interface objects or elements, navigating or reading documents or other text, or activating buttons or other user interface objects or elements, as well as otherwise manipulating user interfaces. Exemplary user interface objects include digital images, video, text, icons, control elements such as buttons and other graphics. A user will, in some circumstances, need to perform such manipulations on user interface objects in a file management program (e.g., Finder from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), an image management application (e.g., Aperture or iPhoto from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a digital content (e.g., videos and music) management application (e.g., iTunes from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a drawing application, a presentation application (e.g., Keynote from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a word processing application (e.g., Pages from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a website creation application (e.g., iWeb from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a disk authoring application (e.g., iDVD from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), or a spreadsheet application (e.g., Numbers from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.).
But existing methods for performing these manipulations are cumbersome and inefficient. These existing methods are especially difficult for users with impaired vision, such as blind or low-vision users, to use.